Benigni, Dante, Boston.
Webphoto of Italian actor, director, performer Roberto Benigni.
Last night I was part of the overflow audience at Boston's Berklee Performance Center, there to see and hear Roberto Benigni in his acclaimed program TuttoDante. Most folks remember Benigni from his Academy-Award winning film Life is Beautiful and his zany antics at the Oscar ceremonies.
In recent years Benigni has taken on a successful second career explicating and reciting in front of large audiences the poetry from The Divine Comedy of Dante Alghieri (1265-1321.) A multi-set DVD exists in Italy of these collected performances.
Last night as a warm-up he gave us first a wacky and irreverent stand-up-comedian routine that ranged everywhere from Italian politics (Berlusconi is a favored victim of his barbs) to currents events to Boston as a cultural town, all given in his inimitable broken and sometimes indeciperable English peppered with Italian. Then he slowly progressed to the subject of the discourse, leading into an examination of Canto V from the Inferno, with triplets on display in English translation on a screen behind him. His explanations digressed, seemed often unfocused, but ultimately all came together as he ended with a beautifully enunciated recitation in Italian of all of Canto V: the torment of the lustful in hell, the tragedy of Paolo and Francesca, adulterous lovers whose story so had moved Dante that it ended in the pilgrim-poet fainting.
It was the best part of the evening, in fact an overwhelming one, as Benigni abandoned antics and gave us a profound delievery of profound poetry, all from memory. The audience remained rapt, whether they understood the Italian words or not...though they should have. He had given them the story and the words during the part that led up to this delivery. There was total attention, total silence, followed by a thunderous applause. We knew we had witnessed something special.
I felt a little bit envious. I too, as a teacher, had taught and read from Dante's Inferno over the decades (as my icon reflects) and gotten some appreciation from many of my students who always told me they remembered the book. ("One hell of a book," I used to joke.) So, job done. But I am not Roberto Benigni. So glad I was there.
Boston Globe review